My new school will free parents from the tyranny of the bossy middle classes

Brixton - where some parents are showing an interest in a new school (Photo: Rex Features)

What am I doing wrong? Some people are outraged that I dare set up a free school. Can someone tell me why? People insisted that I wanted to be a politician when I spoke at the Conservative Party Conference. They said that it was my clever way of changing careers. When I insisted this was not the case, I was accused of dissimulation. But now that I’ve proved the point – that I want to work in school – by setting up a free school, these same people are still not satisfied.

They have essentially banned me from working in the state sector. I could, of course, go to the private sector, and take a step these same people also insist that I want. But I’m only interested in working with urban inner-city youth. So I’m setting up a free school to do exactly that. The Michaela Community School has launched its website: www.michaelacommunityschool.co.uk. It is proving to be quite a hit amongst parents. We are targeting working class kids. We aren’t banning middle–class kids, but I presume no one would suggest we do that. I am, however, out in Brixton market everyday, handing out flyers to every mother I see. Some of these women live on the local estates, and are precisely the kind of parents we welcome at our school. So what exactly is the problem?

The Michaela Community School combines tradition and innovation. It attempts to give inner-city youth a taste of the private sector, where knowledge is taught, benchmarking is common, and high expectations of behaviour and dress are the norm. But the Michaela Community School also recognises it is in the inner city. So there will be an extended day where children will be required to complete their homework, where there will be classes analysing media culture, something that is extremely destructive to our inner-city youth.

Parents don’t have to send us their children, of course. They are simply being given that choice. I have to say that on the whole it is the middle class parents who don’t like the idea of their children being forced to wear their ties to the top and tuck their shirts in. As they tell me time and time again, their uniform has nothing to do with their learning. I happen to disagree. So too, do a number of working class parents disagree. All the Michaela Community School does is give those working class parents an option that wasn’t available to them before. It frees them from the tyranny of the opinionated middle classes.

So what exactly is the problem? Who is being harmed by the existence of this school? One can’t even argue that neighbouring schools will be harmed because there is a shortage of places in Lambeth, and this is why we have chosen Lambeth to set up our school. When I spoke to the Local Authority, their reaction was to tell me that secondary school children quite enjoy travelling out of borough for school, so we shouldn’t change anything. I thought I was going mad!

If middle-class people find free schools so offensive and order and discipline so objectionable, then they should not send their children to our school. They won’t like it. And that’s their choice. I’m all for parental choice! All our school does is give parents real choice. They may, after all, not choose us. But if they do, then shouldn’t they be allowed to send their children to a school whose ethos matches their own? Did I miss something, or are we living in communist Russia?